Students, friends bridge divide over gun control
Pair also splits over the efficacy of protests
BROOKFIELD - Ravina Sachdev and Julia Craig have lots in common.
Friends since elementary school, the Brookfield Central High School juniors love the same kinds of music and theater. They’re both funny, smart and outgoing.
These days, the 17-year-olds are finding themselves on opposite ends of the national debate over gun control that has reignited since the deadly shooting in Parkland Fla., last month.
Sachdev will join hundreds of thousands of Americans expected to take to the streets Saturday as part of a national call for an end to gun violence and a tightening of the nation’s gun laws. Craig will not. And they are both fine with that. “This is such a small part of our friendship,” said Sachdev, who will join the Milwaukee March for Our Lives event, one of several scheduled around the state.
“I like her as a person, not if she’s red or blue or whatever her political view is,” she said.
“I totally agree,” said Craig, who grew up in a family of hunters and is comfortable around firearms. “Politically, we would disagree. But we get along so well.”
Saturday’s march is the latest demonstration organized after the Feb. 14 massacre that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. It follows the National School Walkout in which hundreds of thousands of young people left their classes on March 14 to honor those killed at Parkland and to call for stricter gun laws.
Sachdev helped organize the event at Brookfield Central, which drew about 200 students.
“I really want to be part of this movement ... especially if it’s something so personal as our safety and the safety of our peers and our teachers,” said Sachdev, who supports expanded background checks and a ban on semiautomatic assault rifles used in a number of mass shootings, including Parkland’s.
“I’m not saying those who aren’t involved don’t care. But for me, personally ... to not be involved would be a disservice to what I believe is important.”
Craig thinks those measures are unnecessary and that demonstrations like the march and walkout, which she also sat out, aren’t effective.
“I definitely feel for the victims and everyone affected by the school shootings. But I don’t think having stricter gun laws is going to decrease the number of school shootings or violence in general,” said Craig, whose family keeps their guns in a locked cabinet. She herself has shot an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle in target practice.
“If we really want to stop violence in schools, we need to focus on mental health, and report issues when we see them.”
Sachdev agrees on that point. “She’s right,” she said. “It can’t be just gun control. It has to be both.”
Craig, who wants to join the military after high school and then become a middle-school teacher, doesn’t really see herself as political.
“But I totally think students — and everyone — should speak their mind and really stand for what they believe in,” she said. “I just don’t feel like the march was going to make that much of a difference in our community.”
Likewise, “not marching doesn’t make you a bad person,” Sachdev said.
She was inspired to take part in the walkout and march, not just by the Parkland survivors, but by her father who, she says, has nurtured her understanding of the importance of civic engagement.
“I’m very passionate about politics in general and being engaged,” said Sachdev, who is already planning to register to vote on her 18th birthday in October, just in time for the mid-term elections.
She has written editorials for her school newspaper and has spoken out on many issues, including school safety, through Brookfield Central’s Junior State of America club.
She hopes Saturday’s march and the continued pressure by Parkland students and their supporters will persuade lawmakers to compromise and enact meaningful gun control measures. And she scoffs at the suggestion that some have expressed that young people can’t make a difference in this debate.
“The national movement has already impacted legislation in Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott, who has an A-plus rating from the NRA, just signed a bill to increase the age to buy a gun,” she said. “It’s our voices that are directly affecting those that change. It’s only a matter of time before we see a change in Washington.”